


About Alaska, Or: Will's Regrettable Return to the Wonderful World of Weed

by freedomworm



Category: About a Boy (2002), Looking for Alaska - John Green
Genre: Crossover, Gen, I have no excuses, Metafiction, Post-Canon, This was a lit class assignment, i would not have written this in my own time i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:55:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5391767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freedomworm/pseuds/freedomworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you’re wondering if that’s Elvis,” comes a voice to Will’s left, “I’m pretty sure it is.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	About Alaska, Or: Will's Regrettable Return to the Wonderful World of Weed

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the title: Anyone who knows me knows I cannot resist alliterations, even odd ones.
> 
> Also: So in Lit, we were studying MPDG and Peter Pan Syndrome tropes and we read Nick Hornby's "About a Boy" and John Green's "Looking for Alaska". This is the unholy crossover I created as my unit project; in this fic, I examine how I believe Alaska Young and Will Freeman would interact post-canon (for their respective stories). Will is book!Will, just to be clear, although having seen the movie, I won't lie when I say that Hugh Grant is who I imagine when I think of Will saying these lines. 
> 
> Also, can I just say, I truly hate the MPDG trope? When you think about it, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a terrifying concept, and I'm eternally grateful that the trope cannot exist in real life (unlike PPS). That said, I hate MPDG, but I do feel sorry for Alaska Young. If you'd like to know my thoughts on "Looking For Alaska" (they're pretty harsh, I realize), and you need to fill up some time units ;), you can read what I had to say in my Reader's Blogs, starting at Reader's Blog #5 here: ladyfreewill.blogspot.com
> 
> Lastly, I don't imagine that this fic will be read by many or even any. But, I guess, if you have stumbled upon this -- enjoy.
> 
> -TSM

Will wakes up with a start, and finds himself seated in a chair pushed back against the off-white wall of what is possibly the largest waiting room he has ever seen. All along the walls and in the middle in rows upon rows, people are waiting, seated in uncomfortable wooden chairs -the sort with fuzzy, red cushions.

 _Well that's not right_ , Will thinks, recalling his vague promise to Rachel the day before that he would move his things over to her flat and then take Ali to school the next morning. But it's not as though he knows how he got here, is it? So he can't be blamed.  _Speaking of which… where am I?_ He wonders, and he sits up straight and takes a closer look at the room around him.

He doesn't know any of the people in the room, he doesn't think, and they don't exactly look like they're all from London; Will's fairly certain that the Asian woman in the corner over there is wearing a kimono -and hold on, is that -? Over there with the slicked back hair and clutching an old microphone, is that -? No, impossible.

"If you're wondering if that's Elvis," comes a voice to Will's left, "I'm pretty sure it is."

Will's head snaps around and he gapes at the girl slumped next to him, who's wearing shorts and a tank top, a cigarette dangling between her middle and pointer finger. She's young, but a little older than Ali or Marcus, with short hair and bright green eyes. Will has a million question running through his head.  _Where are we? Who are you? How did I get here? What's going on?_ "Elvis is alive?" he says instead.

The girl snorts. "No," she says, bringing her cigarette to her lips and inhaling deeply. Instead of exhaling, she makes an odd sort of fish face, squinting and making an 'O' with her mouth.

"Oh God," Will says, looking around quickly to make sure no one's staring at them, "Stop doing that with your face. What're you doing? Are you going to be ill or something?"

The girl huffs, smoke billowing from her nose. "Damn," she mutters, "Still can't do it, not even here."

"What's that? What's 'here'?"  _Well done,_ Will thinks,  _Asking the real questions now. Yes, that's a good start_. "Who're you?"  _Might as well add that one, too. I've got to be able to call her something other than Young Blonde Girl._

She looks at him like she's thinking about the question and finally says, "Alaska. Alaska Young. What's your name?"

"Will," he says.

"Well, Will, I guess you haven't figured it out yet, but we're dead. We're all dead here, and we're waiting to get judged for our lives or something. I'm 2,472,583." She holds up her other hand, the one without the cigarette, and waves around a small white tab like the ones you get out of the ticket rolls next to the paperwork counters at clinics.

 _Dead_? Will thinks he ought to say. "Where'd you get one of those?" he says instead.

"You're not very bright are you?" She says and reaches over to pull a ticket out of the breast pocket of Will's jacket. "Hm, 4,677,975,172. Yikes. I'm guessing we'll be here for a while. Want one?" She asks and holds up a cigarette box to Will.

"Uh, sure." Will says and takes one from the box. She pulls out a lighter and holds it out for him.

"Where exactly are we?" he asks, once his smoke is lit.

"On the other side of the Labyrinth," Alaska says.

"The Labyrinth?" Will asks, puzzled.

"The Labyrinth of life," Alaska explains, "And apparently it's boring. God, I wish I had my books…'"

"How did we end up here?" Will asks and looks around again.

"Where have you  _been_?" She says, rolling her eyes, "We're  _dead_. We're… waiting judgement or whatever. Keep up." She pauses, expression turning pensive and her eyes sweep over Will, like she's trying to figure him out. "What do you think will come up in your trial? Might as well think up a defense right?"

 _God, what_ will _come up?_ Will groans internally. He's saved having to answer, however, by a woman's monotone, which comes from somewhere overhead, but  _where_  exactly, Will's not sure.

"Number 2,294,788 to the front desk, number 2,294,788 to the front desk." The voice says, crackling and buzzing as if through a speaker.

Will rubs his forehead and sighs. "Well, what'd you do?" he asks Alaska.

She squints into the space in front of her, thinking about it. "What  _didn't_  I do? I'm a chronic smoker… I drink. I let my mom die when I was a kid, so I guess I'm automatically going to Hell, or whatever the real equivalent is."

Will blinks. "Oh."  _What am I supposed to say to_ that _?_ He wonders. "Well… that's, er, that's rather unfortunate for you -and your mum-I, uh, suppose."

"You know, I was sort of hoping I'd see her once I died," Alaska says, tapping her cigarette against her armrest and watching the ashes fall to the ground. "Anyway… I guess -well, I don't deserve anything good. I mean, I let my  _mom_  die. I couldn't do anything and it just  _happened_."

"That's rather unfortunate," Will says, "But here's another issue. I don't exactly remember  _dying_. So how can I be dead?"

"Did you piss off someone upstairs?" Alaska asks, "I mean, you're not like, a serial killer or anything, right?"

"No," Will says, "I'm a decent human being, I like to think. Well, that is" -and he might as well say it, he supposes, because he's dead, and maybe this is one of the things that he's not supposed to hide. Plus, it all worked out anyway, right? - "I'm decent  _now_ , or more decent. I may have been in a spot of trouble with a single mom's group at some point; I pretended to have a son, you see, but it's all in the past, and I've reformed." He sees her incredulous expression and quickly explains, making quick work of the whole story and mentioning all the main points of his life from the last year or so: SPAT, Suzie, Marcus, Fiona, Rachel. "...And then we all sort of, I dunno, went home, and Marcus says that Ellie is still a bit torn up about the whole Cobain thing, but she's doing better."

Alaska is still gaping at him when he finishes the story, like she's waiting for something else.

"That's about it," Will says, "Rachel and I are still going steady and Marcus comes by every once in a while to play with Ali -they get on a lot better now -and watch telly. He's almost fourteen, thinks he knows everything. It's awful, really."

Alaska frowns, "You know, your life was never really messed up, and you still got a happy ending"

"-Dead, though, now, aren't I? And I can't even remember how"

"-What's the problem with that? You said so yourself, you're  _dead_.  _I'm_  dead."

They fall into silence, both Will and Alaska reminiscing on their lives. Will thinks about Dead Duck Day and the New Year's Party where he met Rachel. He wonders how he died, after all. Did he die in his sleep of some heart condition he wasn't aware of? He doesn't remember going to bed. He glances at Alaska, and wonders, for the first time, how she died. She's rather young. "So," Will says, tactful human being that he is, "How  _did_  you die, anyhow?"

Alaska drops her now spent cigarette on the linoleum-tile floor and crushes the stub under her sandal. "Car crash," she says, not looking up.

"Oh," Will says. He's seen large car accidents in films, but he's never known anyone who died from one in real life. He knows asking whether it was her fault or not would be asking for trouble, so he says instead, like he supposes he ought to have from the start, "Sorry to hear that."

Alaska shrugs, but even with her face turned away, Will can tell that her expression has turned dark. "I was drunk," she says, "I wasn't thinking right, and I just -all I could think about was getting to my mom's grave. I forgot about her that year, I guess, because I was -I was happier or something. I don't know. That's not right, either. I don't know if I was happy -I acted like it sometimes, and maybe sometimes it was true, but I think I mostly wanted to believe it, and when I started to feel better, I'd get these guilty feelings. Like, how can I deserve the kind of -the  _freedom_  of… of a normal life?"

Will stares, and a small voice in his mind tells him that he ought to say something comforting, but he can't think up anything that might be considered appropriate. What the fresh hell is anyone supposed to say to  _that_? "Er…"

Alaska sighs and pulls her legs up to her chest, her toes hanging off the edge of her chair. "Thinking about it now," she says, "I guess I acted ...impulsively, because I was trying to feel like I  _was_  free. Fake it 'til you make it, you know? Anyway, when I was… I drove up to this police cruiser, or I was going up to it really fast, just before I… well, you know. I saw the other car, and even though I was half out of my mind drunk, I could've turned the wheel. I'm sure of it. But I froze, and I was going so fast. I didn't think about anyone or anything else. I just… kept going. Is it bad that even though I felt empty, for a second, it felt like everything was going to be okay? I mean, I died."

"Er…"  _Think Will, think!_ "I guess…I know what you mean. About the emptiness, I suppose. My mother died when I was a boy, but it wasn't -er, tragic." Once the words are out, Will knows that they're true. He can look back on himself from just and year ago, and he knows that, content as he thought he'd been, there had been no purpose to his existence. There still isn't, as far as work goes, but he's got people -Rachel -Marcus -Ali -hell, even Fiona -and they're all people who  _mean_  something; they're not just names in his address book he can call up when he's got time units to fill.

Alaska sighs again, heavily and with the sort of edge of despair that once upon a time, Will would have run from. He still doesn't like the deep type of conversation Alaska seems intent on having, but he's discovered that most people find them slightly uncomfortable, too, and the key is just to listen, anyway.

"So, I focused all my energy on pretending to be some kind of, I dunno, manic friend girl, and you went around for most of your life avoiding commitments." Alaska says, "God, why do you think we're  _like_ this?"

Will wants to be indignant, but alright, maybe he did  _sort of_  avoid responsibilities -but only because he didn't have any! There was only him! A voice in his head, which sounds horribly like Fiona, tells him that he's just trying to make himself feel better about it. After all, in a way, he can't quite fathom his past lifestyle anymore. Not with Rachel and Ali to take care of now. Things are getting pretty serious -Will had finally put his flat on the market after having lived with Rachel and Ali for several months, and he was finally feeling that he had some grounds on which to propose… maybe he ought to start looking for a ring? Oh wait. He's dead. A knot forms in Will's stomach, and to prevent a spiral into denial and panic over his state of death, Will focuses on Alaska. "Well," he says, "I didn't have anyone around me, really. I suppose I was rather spoiled growing up. I don't have a job, see. I live off royalty checks. My father -well, I mentioned earlier."

"Yeah." Alaska finally looks up and when she meets Will's gaze, her eyes are unreadable. "I just let what happened to my mom shape me and in the end, I threw myself into everything as impulsively as possible. I was just… running, and I let myself become something hollow. Even my best friends didn't know crap about me, because I didn't let there be anything in the first place." She gives another one of her soft, tired sighs, and Will is struck with the depth of this young girl, whose life was spent avoiding much meaning at all.

The difference, he thinks, between them, is that up until Will met Marcus and Rachel, he'd scoffed at the idea of anything in life holding significant value; everything was just a means to fill time units, when it came down to it. He hadn't been running from a dark past, not like Alaska. He had been wholly content in remaining sedentary, with nowhere to run to and nothing to run from. He'd had no one to please, and no particular urge to affect anyone's lives or have his affected by anyone else. Of course, Marcus hadn't given Will the choice, had he? Will feels a wry smile spread across his lips at the thought. Typical Marcus, barging into his life.

"Sorry to dump all this on you," Alaska says suddenly, "It's just, my turn's coming up and I guess I'm kind of nervous. I've been thinking about everything a lot, you know? Ugh, this reminds me of Jury. Except, the Colonel and Takumi usually get dragged down with me -and Pudge, I guess. I miss them. You'll start to miss people, too, after a while, but you know what? I kind of miss my stuff more. Is that bad?" she laughs, a quiet snort and chuckle sound that Will used to find unattractive on people, but now knows to be the manifestation of something genuine. With every word, Alaska's expression is brightening, and soon she's got a fond smile on her face. "I miss my friends and Jake -I do, really, but I know they've got to be doing bigger and better things with their lives. Someday I'll just be a distant memory to them, and here I am, stuck waiting for judgement. I miss reading and music," she confides, "All I've got here for some reason is an endless supply of Camels and lighter fluid. God, I'd kill for my iPod and a good book down here-"

Before Will can so much as form the words  _What's an iPod?,_ the droning voice comes over invisible speakers again: "Number 2,472,583 to the front desk, number 2,472,583 to the front desk…"

Alaska startles, looking around wildly, as for something in the room of largely unbothered dead people to give her a sign. Nearby, Elvis has produced an acoustic guitar from somewhere and appears to be strumming the opening chords to 'Can't Help Falling in Love' to a bemused Spanish Conquistador. Alaska stares at Will, a mixture of nervousness and excitement apparent in the arch of her eyebrows and the color creeping onto her cheeks. "That's me," she says, "I'm up, oh God!" She jumps to her feet, and despite her fears, she's smiling, and Will thinks she's all at once admirable, and perhaps somewhat mad for it.

He watches her dash off, down the aisle between the rows and rows of chairs, and wonders if the sudden loneliness he feels is due to his being dead finally catching up with him, or if it's because maybe he's somehow been sucked in by Alaska's odd charm.  _Manic friend girl_ , she'd called herself. Will snorts.  _Then what was I_?  _Chronic avoider of all things adult? Shallow fun fellow? Childish-_

 

But he doesn't have to think about it for long, because when he next blinks, he feels a sudden force against his shoulder and he flails-

 

Right into consciousness.

Marcus's face is looming over him, close enough that Will can see the spots that have taken to colonizing his forehead recently, and one of his hands is gripping Will's shoulder, as if he's been shaking him.

" _Argh_ ," Will groans, shooing Marcus away with one hand and sitting up. He glances around, feeling perplexed. He's at his old flat, except the sitting room is packed away, the furniture -sparse as it was -now disappeared into the stacks of cardboard boxes piled in the corners of the room. It takes Will a moment to remember why the setting around him is strange at all, and then he shouts, "WELL, I'M BLOODY WELL ALIVE, AFTER ALL!"

Marcus, who, Will recalls with sudden clarity, had been recruited to help him move boxes into Rachel's minivan after school let out, stares at him like he's grown a second head. He points at the floor beside Will, "Is that a spliff, Will?"

Will immediately slaps his palms over it. "No," he says, even though it's a lie. He'd found an old joint while finishing his packing and for some reason he'd -well, he could say it was due to to some odd pull of nostalgia, or curiosity, but in the end, he couldn't really justify it, could he? But he'd fallen asleep somehow without finishing the thing, and now he's left here, a couple hours later, filled with regret and the vague recollection of the most existentialist dream he's ever had.  _God_ , he's never lighting up again. He swipes the half-smoked spliff up into a fist as he climbs to his feet, wobbling a little and feeling the light-headed after-effects of the whole ordeal. "Don't smoke hash, Marcus," he advises, feeling very wise indeed, "Just do well in school and be kind to your mother."

Marcus continues side-eyeing him oddly and shrugs, "Whatever," he says, "You're weird, Will." Then he trudges off to get some boxes and take them to the door.

Will looks around once more, at his old sitting room, and he thinks about the large waiting room at the end of what Alaska called 'the Labyrinth'. Once, he thinks, the notion of it all might have filled him with unease -fear, even -but now he decides he'll think about the end when he gets there, and in the meantime, he muses, going to help Marcus with the boxes,  _how did I think up something called an iPod, anyway_?

 

 

 

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Side note: The whole iPod joke is that "About a Boy" takes place in 1993, nearly twenty years before "Looking for Alaska".


End file.
